This is where the fun starts. You can rate your server based on Attitude (Friendly, Neutral, Rude, Downright Mean), Accuracy, Cleanliness, and how long it took to do various things. The speed with which your menus, drinks, starters, meal, and the check were brought to you can all be graded from “What’s taking so long!?” to “Too Quickly.” Depending on how you pick these options, the tip amount based on the percentage of the bill is then pushed upwards (turning the tip amount green in color) or pulled downwards (turning the tip red). The app can probably be very cathartic in situations where you have been very poorly served or when you’re looking to justify a low tip (hey! the Palm Pre told me to undertip!). Dumb Waiter is a fun tip-calculator for the Palm Pre, but certainly falls behind Tip ‘em! in terms of features and design quality.

A single tap on the map is used to zoom in. Unfortunately you can’t adjust the zoom level beyond no-zoom and full-zoom. Without the GPS centering you at the right location, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of swiping and dragging on the map. Tourists using this will have a very difficult time, since they won’t even have a reference to anchor with. The maps themselves are high-quality high-contrast detailed maps of all the transit routes and line information. Major landmarks on the maps are visible which do mitigate the lack of zoom and reference problem a little bit. Integration with the GPS, plus a News feed regarding traffic and transit delays would go far in making this app more than just a static image of a map. As Google moves aggressively to include transit information in their Google Maps service, they will not be concerned about any potential competition from this app.

When played live, I imagine most of the fun comes from anticipating the roll and counting your score against the chart. With this version, since the computer does all the counting, you may find yourself compulsively rolling the dice and moving the game along. The large scores (the minimum increment is a 100) also encourage the user to move along quickly. Most of the skill in this game is reduced to judging whether or not you want to take a Stand or continue rolling. This decision is usually based on how much of a lead you have or are trying to make up. The full version will probably allow playing against a live opponent, which should make the game significantly more fun. For now, Word Ace retains the title of the best game on the Palm Pre smartphone, though Zilch Lite may be quite engaging for those who swear by dice-based games.

The app accepts a maximum check amount of four digits, which should hold up fine unless inflation goes through the roof, in which case tipping accurately will be the least of our worries. However, that means Pre users who travel to parts of the world with higher denomination currencies will find this app a little difficult to use (you could divide and multiply by hundred to accommodate things). You can split the tab by up to ten people. I tried to push the app a little by excluding more than the check amount, and it manages just fine without running into trouble with negative numbers and such. Overall, this Palm Pre app is visually delightful and easy-to-use. If you dine out frequently with quite a few people, it will save you a lot of headache.

Clicking on a video within an article will launch a new card with the YouTube application on your Pre. Everything is fast and smooth, and browsing articles is a breeze. You can bookmark articles for later perusal or if you find yourself frequently visiting a small set of how-to pieces. The bookmarks are available as a list from the top menu button. You can also increase or decrease the font size through the same menu. Articles do not come with a contents section, so it’s easy to get lost in some of the longer articles (especially since the Pre doesn’t offer a scroll bar to show your relative position in the page). Sadly, there is no search option at present but browsing and discovery is made much easier with the related articles section at the bottom of each article. Overall, this is a nice new app for the Palm Pre that can come in handy in unexpected situations – a must download for every Palm Pre owner.

You can also send the translation to a friend via email or text message. The app automatically launches the right application to do that. There’s one final unintuitive aspect to the interface: once you pick and set both your languages, the button below the place where you enter your sentence is “Switch” instead of “Translate.” Once I’m done typing the sentence, my fingers immediately try to hit the button right below the sentence. Instead, you have to go all the way to the bottom to hit the right button. Other than these quirks, which no doubt we’ll all forget once we start using the app, Translator is a functional and useful Palm Pre app and can come in very handy while traveling or interacting with people from different countries.

Subscribers to Directv’s SuperFan module have an even higher number of features to play with, including real-time highlights, live announcers and live score updates for every single game. You also get full access to the Red Zone channel. The app is very well designed and presents a wealth of media in a simple and intuitive manner. Data on games and statistics really are uploaded live, with a barely noticeable delay. Streaming video quality is fantastic, but an option to view lower quality or lower resolution video for those on a slower Wi-Fi network or those concerned about battery life would have done wonders. This is one of the best Palm Pre apps currently available, but only works for those with an existing Directv NFL Sunday subscription.

There are no controls or major interface elements near the bottom so tapping an ad by accident is nearly impossible. Tapping the ad will launch the browser in a separate card and keep your game uninterrupted. The ad changes every time you tap a bubble, which can be a little distracting. You can turn off sounds for the game in case you’re playing in a library or other place with a need for silence. Unfortunately you can’t save the state of a game, you’ll just have to keep a card running if you are interrupted mid-game and need to come back to it at a later time. Overall, Bubbles is clean, simple, and relatively well-implemented. A worthwhile download that compares well with other implementations of the game on other smartphones.

The best feature of the Yelp service is the detailed user reviews and ratings for restaurants and businesses. If you find that the “Where” app on your Pre appears crowded, Yelp offers a cleaner and seemingly faster app for a similar purpose. However, Where offers much more than simple Yelp integration. The Where wall is an excellent feature that offers a messaging component over and above user reviews. If you’re currently happy with Where, you’ll find that Yelp only offers a cleaner interface. “Where” does offer everything that Yelp does and some more. Overall, this app is an excellent location-aware directory application and stands well on its own, but it only offers a subset of Where‘s functionality and the latter will be a better option for most Palm Pre users.

You can sort the results list based on distance, ratings, and even alphabetically. The default sort method is by distance. The app also pulls up ratings and reviews for each restaurant. You can see the address and telephone number and initiate a call from within the app. Restaurants are also classified based on the type of cuisine served and a link to the restaurant’s website is offered if one exists. “$” symbols are used to indicate how pricey a restaurant is. You cannot write your own reviews or rate restaurants with this application, and there’s no way to see a map with your current location and the restaurant’s location visible – you’ll have to pull up Google Maps separately to see that. This is one of the more specialized Palm Pre Apps and does one thing very well – find the nearest Kosher restaurants.